


Little Gestures of Hope

by Lilyliegh



Series: Appleshipping Week 2018 [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Childhood, Childhood Friends, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Just Add Kittens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 10:58:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14283447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilyliegh/pseuds/Lilyliegh
Summary: After finding a crate of baby kittens while exploring the alleys of the Common, Rin and Yuugo go on a mission to find a safe home for the kittens.





	Little Gestures of Hope

**Author's Note:**

> for Appleshipping Week day 03: memories

Yuugo hears the mewls first. One second he’s balancing on the raised curb, arms spread out on either side to help him balance; and the next second he’s leaping off the curb, arms high above his head, and dashing down an alley. He hears Rin’s thudding steps behind him, so he runs faster knowing that she’s following him. 

The noise bounces off the tall, damp walls of the alley. The bricks are chipped away in sections, and green moss and mildew grows up the wallside. The alley is narrow enough that, if he leans from side to side, his shoulders will hit the wall. An adult wouldn’t fit in here, and neither would even a large kid. Fortunately, street life has made Rin and Yuugo wiry kids with gangly arms and legs, battered and bruised from climbing and foraging.

Yuugo ducks his head, narrowly missing a hanging beam. The deeper he travels into the alley, the eerier it becomes. Just how did all the junk on the ground get here if no one is small enough to squeeze through? Yuugo finds the answer when he raises his head and sees the black, wrought-iron bars of apartment balconies. There are birds resting on the bars, their oily feathers blending into the metal.

_ So people live up there …  _ he thinks.

He and Rin live in an orphanage. It’s the lowest of the low, even for the Commons, but it’s still home. To Yuugo and Rin, home is wherever they are together. He met Rin at the orphanage and hasn’t separated since. Even now, if Yuugo were to stretch his hand back, he’d find Rin’s fingers curling into his sweaty palm. She’s never more than an arms-length away.

The mewling grows increasingly louder, echoing all around him. Since it’s so dark though, Yuugo nearly runs into it and them – it being the cardboard box, and them being three baby kittens. 

“Woah!” Yuugo says, throwing himself backwards so as to not step on the kittens. He collides into Rin’s chest, but she braces herself on the wall and holds him steady so as to not topple to the ground. When they’ve righted themselves, Rin pushes Yuugo back up. Her chin comes to rest on his shoulder.

“What’s there?”

“Kittens,” Yuugo says, his voice more of a breath of electrifying air. A bubble of joy rumbles in his stomach. Kittens! Yuugo loves animals, especially baby animals. In the books at the orphanage, there are pictures of baby farm animals. Though Yuugo can’t read, he still likes to look at the pictures. And these kittens here, they look just like the ones in the book – brown and white, with big, blue eyes. 

Rin’s chin sinks further into his shoulder. “Where’s … the mother?” she asks. He feels her head shift from side to side. Yuugo looks around too. There doesn’t appear to be a mother. Would the mom-cat leave her kittens alone while she searched for food? Yuugo doubts it. 

“Maybe they don’t have a mom,” Rin says at last.

Yuugo huffs. “Well of course they have a mom – where else do kittens come from? A tree?”

Rin bonks him on the head. “I mean the mom-cat isn’t  _ around.  _ Maybe the kittens were separated from her.”

That makes more sense, but Yuugo still huffs and rolls his eyes. He crouches down, the weight of Rin’s chin no longer on his shoulder, and leans over the kittens. They haven’t stopped mewling, and their cries chip away at Yuugo’s heartstrings. They must be missing their mom, right? Even if they don’t know their mom, they must still miss her; Yuugo feels the same way about his own mother.

Behind him, Rin peers over his shoulders. 

“We need to take them home,” Yuugo says.

“What?”

“Home,” Yuugo repeats. “They’ll die if they’re out here –”

“We can’t take kittens  _ home,”  _ Rin says. Her strong hands push down on his back as she leans over him to get a closer inspection at the kittens. “Those aren’t even ours.”

“Well they’re not anyone’s if they’re out here,” Yuugo growls. “Besides, they need our help.” He reaches out, but Rin’s hand slaps it away.

“There’s a book out there that says don’t touch baby animals or else they’re mums will abandon them.”

“They’re already abandoned, Rin.” Yuugo heaves a sigh, feeling Rin’s hands rise and fall on his back. “I can’t leave them here, not when I can help them. They must be hungry – there must be something we can do.”

He hears Rin sigh noisily behind him; however, she remains quiet for a moment. Then, just as gently as he had been, she reaches over him and rubs her index finger on the head of a kitten. It keeps crying, its eyes pinched closed, but its ears flicker appreciatively. Yuugo feels his heart alight with flames of hope. He reaches out too, using his fingers to cup the kitten’s head in his palm. He hears Rin suck in a breath, but even Yuugo knows how to be gentle with baby animals.

As he keeps petting the kittens, its cries slowly soften. Over the noise of the three other kittens, it doesn’t make much of a difference, but Yuugo still feels a sense of pride.

“I’m a cat-whisperer,” he tells Rin.

She laughs out loud. 

“Rin-rin?”

“Yeah?”

“What do kittens eat?”

She clicks her tongue. “I think they just drink milk – mum’s milk, not cow milk. But if we don’t have any of that …”

“We should ask someone!” The thought comes to mind and bursts from his mouth, and Yuugo shoots his head up and hits Rin square on the chin.

“Ow!” she says, holding her chin, and then, “Yuugo!” as she pushes his head back down. Yuugo hears her rub her skin. “I mean … that’s probably the only way we’ll be able to help them. There’s someone out there who can, like an animal doctor.”

Yuugo furrows his brows as he tries to think of an animal doctor. He and Rin knows these streets better than anyone else in the Commons, but even then he’s never seen an animal doctor, or even a regular doctor. Those kinds of people exist in the Tops, the rich folk who can get medicine when they’re sick or operations when they want to feel better. And he and Rin can’t go up to the Tops without getting caught. They’ve tried that before.

No, Yuugo needs to find someone that just has a pet, someone that –

A face clicks in his mind.

“Hey Rin, you know that guy?”

“What guy?”

“The one with the bees – Bee Guy.”

“That’s not his name, is it?” She snorts loudly, and then says, “But yeah, I know the guy.”

“What about him?”

“What  _ about  _ him?”

This time Yuugo sighs so noisily that it frightens the kittens, and he coos and strokes their heads as he tries to soothe them back down to silence. They were nearly quiet too!

“What if we ask the Bee Guy if he knows how to take care of kittens. He takes care of animals –”

“He likes  _ bees,  _ and I don’t even think he has any bees of his own.”

“But he’s an adult!”

Rin doesn’t respond. She clicks her tongue, a habit that means she’s deep in thought. Crouched below her, Yuugo waits with bated breath for her response. Rin is the brains behind a lot of their operations, and he needs her on board if he’s ever going to rescue these kittens. She’ll know how to talk to the Bee Guy, and how to get the kittens the help they need.

At last, Rin grunts. “Sure, fine,” she says, and then adds, “Let’s go find the Bee Guy. I know where he lives.”

Yuugo lets out a soft whoop, careful not to frighten the kittens, and then gives them all one last pat on the head. “I’ll be back soon,” he tells them all, tapping a finger to their soft, fuzzy heads. “Just wait for me kittens – I’ll have you home safe and snug soon.”

He and Rin spin around, rubbing their shoulders on the wet alley walls, and then head back out towards the main street. The light assaults their eyes when they first climb out, and though the Commons sits in the underbelly of City and beneath the Tops, Yuugo still thinks the first sight of the sky is beautiful. When he looks up, cable wires snake across the skyscape. The buildings stretches towards the arching roads on the Tops side. It all looks like a complex, intricate maze.

Rin takes his hand and begins to lead him down the street. The road is slick from dripping water from the Tops water pipes, and more moss and mildew grows everywhere. More than once Yuugo has been plagued down by lung infections from the stale, damp air. He and Rin wear cloth masks over their faces to combat some of the dirty air. Rin has extra protection too: a soft hat on her head hiding the unruly, green strands of her hair, and a pair of fingerless gloves to keep the palms of her hands from getting cut.

Yuugo doesn’t have anything special – a t-shirt and jeans that show every scrape and bruise on his body. He wears those marks with pride though. They’re from climbing in pipes and dangling from telephone poles, and not every eight-year-old gets to treat their city like a jungle gym.

The street grows busier where Rin is taking him. There are shops, some boarded up and some open, selling trade goods and groceries. Yuugo smiles a toothy grin at shopkeepers, showing how he’s proudly lost both of his top teeth. 

Five minutes later, Yuugo tells Rin, “I don’t think you know where you’re going.”

“Do too,” Rin says, shaking his hand for emphasis. “I saw the Bee Guy near a house up here –”

“Maybe he was visiting a friend –”

“Do  _ you  _ know where he lives, Yuugo?”

“In a hotel?”

Rin snorts. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze, and pulls him closer. “He’s somewhere around here, just give me a second …”

Rin slows down her pace as she heads into an area with a bit more light. The road has opened up, no longer so tightly packed. The ground has grown dusty too, and the buildings look like wooden, albeit rotting, barns. Yuugo glances around for any sign of the Bee Guy. From his memory, the guy was tall, electric blue hair, rough features –

Yuugo sees him outside the barn. He can’t help it when he has to speak. He shouts, “Bee Guy!”

The man’s head snaps, eyes narrowing.

Rin tugs Yuugo behind her, instantly defensive.

“Rin,” Yuugo says, trying to get in front of her, “that’s him, that’s the Bee Guy!”

Rin does not budge. Yuugo doesn't get why. Sure, the guy looks a bit stern, and he’s stood up and coming towards them, but this guy likes bees! This guy is going to help them take care of the kittens, and so they can’t be on guard around someone that’s supposed to offer them advice.

The Bee Guy comes closer. If Rin stood on Yuugo’s shoulders, they might have been an inch or two taller than him. His broad shoulders are too wide to fit in the alleyway they crawled out of of, and his arms are the width of their heads. He crosses his arms over his chest and kneels down, not too close to them, but enough that Rin feels the need  to yank Yuugo behind her.

“Bee Guy?” he says. His voice is deep, rough at the ends, but then he … laughs. Yep, he laughs, a rich, hearty note.

“Bee Guy,” he repeats to himself. “Cute nickname, kid.”

“Yuugo,” he says from behind Rin. “My name’s Yuugo.”

“And Rin.” She tightens her grip on Yuugo’s shoulders. “And your name?”

“Call me Shinji.”

Yuugo whispers in Rin’s ear, “Call him Bee Guy.”

Rin pushes her hand over Yuugo’s mouth. Her body is rigid in front of Yuugo, and the slightest tremble courses through her arms and legs. Yuugo trusts a lot of people – Commons people, that is; the Tops can suck it – but Rin is more cautious. She warms up to people slowly, and though she’ll protect him with her dying breath, there’s no denying that she’s petrified before this adult.

Shinji seems to know that too, or at least Yuugo thinks so. He doesn’t approach, keeping a healthy distance away from Rin. Yuugo doesn’t have to arch his head back to see Shinji either since he’s knelt down to their level. Adults don’t normally crouch down to his level.

“What’s up?” Shinji asks them.

Rin stiffens.

Yuugo wriggles himself from her grip, but instead of going ahead he stands at her side and holds her hand in his own. “Sir Bee Guy, ” Yuugo says, remembering his manner, “we need some help. There’re some kittens, little brown ones, that we found in a box, and you’re too big and can’t get to them but we can, and we want to take care of them, so can you tell us what you feed your bees so that we can feed our kittens that, because I bet they’re hungry and that’s why they’re crying.”

He says it all in one breath, face red from exertion by the end of it. 

For a moment, Shinji doesn’t say anything.

“Did you … get that?” Rin says, teeth in her lip.

Shinji nods. One blue eyebrow raises towards his bangs cutting across his forehead. “What I feed … my bees?” 

Yuugo nods his head. “Yeah – or if you feed cats too, what you feed them.”

Shinji chuckles, the sound like the rumble of an active volcano. “I don’t feed bees anything,” he says, “but if you’re talking about kittens, you have to know how old they are. Some kittens can’t have solid foods.”

Yuugo chews on his lip, and then lets go of Rin’s hand to show Shinji about how big they were. “This big.”

“The mom wasn't there,” Rin adds. “We just thought maybe we could help the kittens.”

“I completely understand,” Shinji says. “But if the mom-cat isn’t around, they need to go to someone who can care for them –”

“Can you?” Yuugo interrupts. “Can you care for them, Bee Guy?”

A corner of Shinji’s mouth quirks up at the nickname. “Nah kiddo, but I know who can. I’ll give you a name and address, and you can bring the kittens there. In the meantime though …” He taps his chin thoughtfully, and then rises to full height. Yuugo can’t help the soft gasp that escapes his lips. This guy has got to be taller than anyone he’s ever seen! “I have some milk –”

“Cats can’t have cow milk,” Rin interrupts. “We can’t feed them that.”

“I’ve got something special, something a friend gave me when I was raising my pup. Wait out here and I’ll bring it back for you.”

Rin stiffens and jerkily nods her head.

Yuugo reaches for her hand again.

Rin lets out a breath of air.

“The Bee Guy is gonna help us,” Yuugo tells her. “We’re gonna save those kittens.”

They wait outside his door, standing on the dusty pathway. The house Shinji came from looks like a barn with big doors and no windows at the front, but when Yuugo stares closely at the boards he can see handprints – child-sized, and all different colours like kids have painted on the barn itself. It makes Yuugo’s heart leap with joy, and he smiles his wide, toothy grin when Shinji returns with a small, ceramic bowl.

“Can I trust you to bring my bowl back?”

“Yes, sir!” Yuugo says. He takes the bowl in his hands, bowing his head a bit in gratitude. There’s a creamy mixture inside, which Shinji then explains is a special kind of milk for newborn kittens. 

“It’s not the best source of nutrition, so take them to the guy a few blocks down in that blue house over there, but until then the kittens might appreciate some milk.”

“Thanks,” Rin says.

“Yeah, thanks!” Yuugo says.

Shinji’s smile grows wider. “You take care, all right? You’re good kids.”

Rin’s cheeks blossom at the praise, but Yuugo’s burst ruby-red when he laughs outright. They turn around and head back down the dirt pathway, back to where the buildings loom over their heads and the street narrows to single-file marching along wet pavement. Yuugo glares at anyone that dares to push him and make him spill the kittens’ milk; ahead of him, Rin keeps close and makes a path for him to follow.

Fortunately, while all the houses look the same, Rin finds the alleyway they went into. It’s eerily quiet too, as though perhaps the kittens have fallen asleep with all their crying. Rin and Yuugo peer down the alleyway just to make sure, and then they duck their heads and begin their descent into what feels like the belly of the city.

Yuugo keeps his elbows tucked into his side as he follows Rin. Each step he takes is carefully placed; he cannot spill the kittens’ milk. He keeps his eyes on the ground, watching for any fallen debris. Over his head, he hears the sound of the wind whistling through the bars, and the caw of the black crows perched on the balconies.

With his attention focused on the ground, Yuugo doesn’t realise that Rin has stopped and bowls right into her. A bit of the milk sloshes over the rim of the bowl and onto his hands. 

“Hey, watch it, Rin-rin!” he says. “I spilt –”

“No.”

Rin’s voice has never sounded so hollow. It echoes all around him, the only noise in the entire alleyway. The kittens aren’t mewling, and the crows aren’t cawing, and the wind has ceased its whistling. It’s just the two of them in the hallway, breathing through the masks over their mouths and noses.

“Yuugo –”

He stands up on his tiptoes. Rin may be taller than him, but her hunched shoulders give him just enough space to see that there are no kittens in the box. The box is still there, and the blanket, but the kittens …

Yuugo feels his throat close up. He loses all feeling in his hands, the only sensation in his body the stab of his heart in his chest. A sob bubbles up, and then another. Tears drip from his wide, blue eyes and down his wet cheeks. They catch on his mask, and he rips it right off.

“Where – where are they? Where are they, Rin-rin? The kittens – where –”

Rin turns around, her shoulders caving into her thin body. She brings a hand to her mouth, and then another hand to his cheek.

“Rin-rin, where?” Yuugo wails. “Where are the kittens?”

The milk on the ground soaks through his shoes. The bowl has shattered too, and Yuugo kicks the scraps aside and he steps forward and buries his face into Rin’s shoulder. The moment his face makes contact with her skin, he lets all his emotions pour out of him – the anger, the sorrow, the pain. He doesn’t let anything stay with him, dumping it all out in great, heaving gasps.

Rin’s strong arms come to wrap around his body. She holds him close, like a mother would hold her child, and presses her nose into the curve of his neck. Yuugo buries himself closer and closer, blocking the whole world out: the wind and the caws, the sounds of people outside.

“I’m sorry,” Rin whispers to him.

Yuugo wails loudly.

“I’m sorry,” Rin says again. 

She can’t say anything else. Yuugo doesn’t expect her to. He truly did think he could save them though, that he could rescue them from the belly of the Commons and raise them into healthy cats. He thought, even without their mother, he could be like a mother, like a caring parent.

“It’s not your fault.”

Of course it’s not. But that doesn’t make it easier.

Rin’s arms squeeze him close. She never lets him go, not until Yuugo breaks away. And he doesn’t move, comfortable and safe in her arms. If he opens his eyes, he’ll see the box again. If he thinks too hard, he’ll remember the smile Shinji had when they said goodbye.  _ You’re good kids _ , he had said. Those words only send another knife into Yuugo’s heart.

Rin’s weathered hand brushes against his forehead. “I’m sorry, Yuugo.”

He hums back to her. There’s nothing else she can say, and nothing they can really do. But for now, what Yuugo wants most is to be in Rin’s arms and hear her voice, and so he doesn’t let go for as long as he can. 


End file.
